“OpenCorporates plays a crucial role in our platform. Receiving company information with global coverage at scale from OpenCorporates helps our users to better understand who they’re dealing with in their supply chains”.
Michael Short
Co-Founder & Managing Director – Special Projects
ethiXbase
Challenge
Supply chain risk management is an increasing challenge for international companies.
Stringent anti-corruption regulation, increased stakeholder expectations around ethical business practices and the complexity of today’s multi-tiered global supply chains all combine to put more pressure on ethics, legal and compliance departments.
Uncovering and mitigating risk hidden among the suppliers, agents and other third parties that make up corporate supply chains is especially difficult at scale – given that third party ecosystems are often underpinned by thousands of interconnected legal entities.
ethiXbase 360 automates the screening of their users’ third parties during onboarding and ongoing monitoring, allowing them to scale their supply chain or environmental, social and governance (ESG) risk management efforts.
To achieve this, their platform needs access to a trusted and reliable source of global legal entity data.
Solution
ethiXbase chose to integrate the OpenCorporates API into their ethiXbase 360 platform.
This means that when users of the platform enter the names of the third parties they need due diligence to be conducted on, OpenCorporates’ data is called on programmatically – to help identify the legal entity each third party relates to and its officers.
The platform takes this foundational company information and uses it to consult risk-related datasets, such as sanctions and politically exposed persons lists, in order to produce a due diligence report – outlining any risk indicators.
Accessing company data via the OpenCorporates API means that ethiXbase users can rely on data that is:
- Immediately available: creating greater efficiency
Instead of needing to consult each company registry record-by-record, accessing legal entity data via the OpenCorporates API allows the platform’s users to quickly call on the key information on legal entities from one place. This in turn makes the process of third party screening and monitoring faster and more efficient.
- Globally connected: leading to cross-border insights
Users of the ethiXbase 360 platform benefit from data on legal entities in 140 jurisdictions. As all this data is standardised into a consistent global schema, this makes it easier for ethiXbase to incorporate it into their platform.
- Provenanced: ensuring users can leverage it with confidence
Every company record on OpenCorporates clearly states which official public source it came from and when it was collected. This allows users of the platform to make decisions with the data with greater confidence.
Results
- Fuller picture of risk in corporate supply chains
Access to OpenCorporates’ data, along with the other risk-related datasets available via the ethiXbase 360 platform, provides its users with a fuller picture of the risk third parties pose in their supply chain. - Greater efficiency allows risk management efforts to scale
The time saved by the automatic aggregation of company data allows users to refocus their effort on analysing potential risk indicators identified in the due diligence reports created by ethiXbase 360, rather than spending the majority of their time compiling information. It also allows them to scale up the due diligence required to thousands of third parties.
An illustrative example of how ethiXbase 360 uses OpenCorporates’ data to support their users’ due diligence efforts
About ethiXbase
ethiXbase is a RegTech business that delivers robust technology and data analytics to help corporates and third parties create and maintain sustainable business practices. With a mission to accelerate the world’s progress towards sustainability, the company creates compelling solutions that help its clients build sustainable supply chains that benefit people and planet.
ethiXbase’s end-to-end risk management platform provides businesses with the data, analysis and tools to drive holistic and quantifiable improvements in ESG, supply chain risk and resiliency. As a member of the United Nations Global Compact, it offers companies the tools and insights they need to positively impact their business operations and achieve a more sustainable and resilient future.
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